by the author of dead companies walking

Monthly Archives: August 2016

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Two of the roughest, most failure-prone sectors in the stock market have always been—and probably always will be—restaurants and retail. Competition is brutal in both spaces, margins are usually slender, and bankruptcy always seems to be one poor management decision away.

I’ve written about the slow-motion train wreck of the traditional retail sector fairly regularly over the last couple of years, and with several large operators like Nordstrom’s and Kohl’s posting surprisingly decent earnings lately, I thought it might be a good time to check back again. Could brick-and-mortar retail be on the brink a comeback?

One of my favorite investing quotes comes from the legendary 1968 book The Money Game by George Goodman, aka Adam Smith: “If you do not know who you are, Wall Street is an expensive place to find out.”

I put this line at the beginning of my book because I’ve seen its wisdom proved again and again in my thirty-plus year career. As ironic as it sounds, the folks who start out in the investment business just to make money usually make less of it. The ones who do so because they’re inspired to learn as much as they can tend to make more. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. We’re all trying to do that—the more the better. But if investing doesn’t fuel your intellectual curiosity, you’re probably not going to make as much money as you hope, and there’s a good chance you’ll go broke.

"[Scott Fearon's] insights on the common ways that mature companies often doom themselves apply equally well to start-ups. Every business, young or old, needs to avoid the ... mistakes that he outlines."

About the Author

Scott Fearon has spent thirty years in the financial services industry.
Since 1991, Scott has managed a hedge fund in Northern California that invests in fast-growing companies with little or no Wall Street coverage while shorting the stocks of distressed businesses on their way bankruptcy.